Alone?
by Elorah
Summary: Kiera tries another aspect of the 2012-life: having a drink in a bar, because she's feeling alone. But is she? Enter Kellog. R&R VERY appreciated!


_Written for the show "Continuum"._

_Disclaimer:  
I don't own anything except an old computer and a too-vivid imagination, plus a few review-loving genes.  
After watching almost half of S01, I had a ton of plot bunnies jumping around in my head making plot-babies so I caught one of them and this is the result. It's slightly OOC and AU but mostly just a one-shot happening somewhere during season one, although no one knows for sure exactly where (I asked the bunnies, and they just stole my carrots and ignored the question.)._  
_Un-BETAed - so please excuse any errors. They're solely mine._

_Reviews are HIGHLY appreciated!_

She was alone.

Alec's voice was temporarily not inside her head. He had other things to attend to at the farm and she guessed he'd be silent a while longer. (She had started to miss it a little. That angel/devil voice steering her, guiding her. She had a hard time recognizing Alec as a person at all. To her, he wasn't a 17 year old tech wiz – not an elderly man with more than one trick up his sleeve. He was simply her guiding light and that voice that kept her from believing everything was a dream.)

So she'd tried another aspect of the human experience anno 2012.  
Drinking alone in a bar. Everyone seemed to do it, judging from the shows on TV.  
After getting used to actual coffee she'd tried a beer, once, at dinner. She hadn't liked it and couldn't understand how that could be SO expensive in the future (the current. Her old life/her real life? Whatever.) so she'd sworn she wouldn't ever drink another one.

That's why, perched on the edge of her bar stool, she'd tried whiskey. That'd made her eyes tear up and her throat constrict. She'd actually spat it back into the glass. The bartender had laughed and asked why she didn't go for something smoother? She'd shrugged and blushed slightly. What did SHE know about drinks?  
He'd promised to fix her something she'd like – or it'd be on the house, he'd said.  
It'd taken a few minutes of him pouring beers and swiping at puddles before he shook and mixed and stirred up something that looked like orange juice and tasted like… heaven.

She'd sipped it slowly, and made no rush with the second one either (this time the friendly bartender had smiled widely and added a festively colored umbrella and a lacquered-looking cherry that smelled artificial and tasted too-sweet), but it still kind of made her world feel a little … softer. Less harsh. She didn't dislike it. It was hard to remember the tough stuff and to focus on bad shit when the world had gone a teensy bit smudged around the edges.

-

HE had slid into the seat next to hers as she was finishing her second drink. He eyed the orange concoction and raised his eyebrows, his lips curled into that lopsided half smirk, half genuine smile of his. He'd just shook his head in amusement and told the bartender  
"Two more of those, please."  
She opened her mouth to argue, but what came out was a simple "Kellog".  
"Back to last names, are we? Well, then. Fancy meeting you here, at my favorite watering hole, CAMERON…"  
He winked. She wrinkled her forehead, not quite sure what the joke was. It didn't seem important, so she let it go.

They sat in companionable silence and sipped their drinks (she had hers through a straw. For some reason she couldn't quite explain, it amused her to ingest the alcoholic beverage through a neon colored plastic tube.). He was jotting down letters in a crossword puzzle, or tapping the side of his face with the pen while thinking, his forehead slightly wrinkled as he did so. From time to time, their hands would collide as they snuck into the bowl of pretzels the bartender had added to their order, "on the house, because you guys look like you need a snack".

They'd both mumble excuses but secretly look forward to their next opportunity to touch.

It wasn't so strange, Kiera told herself. She just needed to feel like she was REAL, and Kellog knew her world. He knew her reality. He understood her feeling of being somewhat disjointed. At least she thought he'd understand, if she asked him, which she swore to herself she never would.  
You just DON'T show a conman your weaknesses.  
CPS one-oh-one.  
But she still "accidentally" brushed her hand against his every now and then.

-

He caught it then.  
She'd moved a little closer, starting to look over his shoulders and trying to figure out the crossword puzzle. "7 across is 'nefarious'" she'd said, reaching out for another few pretzels (they were scarce now, so she only took one or two at a time, not wanting her excuse to run out) and a skin-on-skin reminder that she was real, when his hand turned palm up and his fingers snuck in between hers as she reached the bowl.  
He didn't say a work. Just worked 'nefarious' into the crossword puzzle and nodding to himself a little, while his hand remained linked with hers. She stared at their entwined fingers and tensed for a moment, but slowly the warmth from his skin seemed to seem into her too-cold-bones and she started to relax.

As the bar closed, they stood up. He stuck his pen back inside his jacket pocket, tossed a few bills on the bar and gently tugged her coat up around her neck. They walked in silence until they stood outside his apartment, not knowing where to go from there. She shivered from the damp cold in the air and stuck her free hand deeper into her coat pocket.  
He smiled, his eyes glittering in the streetlight, and tugged a little at her hand.  
"Come on, Cameron. Better get you inside before you freeze to death."

Neither of them said another word until they'd reached his door and he'd turned the key.

-

"I'm not going to sleep with you."  
"I know."  
That was it. He tossed her a pair of pajama pants and a smallish t-shirt and told her that there was a spare toothbrush in the cupboard beneath the sink. She found it and located the toothpaste in the mirrored cabinet, washed her face using his soap and grimaced at the tenseness of dry skin, when she couldn't find any kind of lotion.  
Quickly sliding out of her clothes and suit (she folded them up neatly and placed them on a chair by the side of the shower) and into the ones he'd borrowed her, the thought crossed her mind that it should feel wrong, but somehow it… didn't.

He'd changed into pajama bottoms when she came out. Nothing covered his torso and she reflected on the beauty of its tanned, muscular form before she slid into his bed, under the soft, folded-aside duvet that surely cost a fortune.  
The room went dark and she had a second of panic striking at her heart when she heard the rustle of moving feet but couldn't see anything.  
The bed dipped slightly when he sat down and then stretched out beside her.  
She hesitated, tense and slightly uncomfortable, suddenly. He didn't.  
His arm snaked out and found her waist, twining around her and pulling her up against his warm body. Her head lay comfortably on top of his chest, his heart beating steadily, comforting under her cheek and almost without a conscious move of her own, her hand came to rest just beneath his collar bone.  
She relaxed into his warmth and she could feel the low rumbling of his chuckle before she heard it.  
"Was that so hard? You need to unwind, Cameron. I only bite when invited."  
She could hear the smile in his voice, as he continued  
"Now, sleep."

And she did.

For the first time in ages, she drifted into a deep, rejuvenating sleep that wasn't interrupted by nightmares or strange dreams. For once, she didn't wake up to a tear stained pillow and a feeling of panic.

In the morning she awoke, still curled up into his warm body. He smelled like warmth. Like pine, leather and gasoline and coffee… or maybe the coffee wasn't him she realized, when some kind of intricate alarm system went off in the kitchen.  
A few minutes later, swept up in a huge terrycloth bathrobe and with a pair of his big socks on her cold feet, they sat at his table having coffee and French toasts. (How DID he learn to cook, she wondered.)  
He read a magazine and she sipped her coffee while idly flipping at her phone.

Alec's voice was still void from her inner ear, and she was still a long, long way from home, but she wasn't uncomfortable with the silence.

-

She was not alone.


End file.
